-
2001. Temporal information in sentences of Mandarin. In Xu
Liejiong and ShaoJingmin, editors in chief; editors K.K. Luke, Shao
Jingmin, Shan Zhourao and XuLiejiong New Views in Chinese Syntactic
Research -- International Symposium onChinese Grammar for the New
Millenium. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Jiaoyu Chuban she.
Temporal Information in Sentences of Mandarin
Carlota S. Smith (University of Texas)Mary S. Erbaugh (Eugene,
Oregon)
All languages allow speakers and receivers to locate situations
in time. In thischapter, we explore how temporal information is
conveyed in Mandarin. The languagedoes not have tense morphemes,
and aspectual viewpoint is not obligatory, yet people areable to
arrive at consistent temporal interpretations. We identify the
resources thatconvey the relevant information, and state principles
for temporal interpretation.1
There is a precept of linguistic research that counsels a
strategy of explicitness:study a domain in languages that code it
explicitly, to understand the domain inlanguages that do not. We
use the strategy of explicitness to study temporal location.Tense
and aspectual viewpoint, key factors in temporal location, are
obligatory insentences of English. After formulating principles for
how temporal information isconveyed in English, we are better able
to understand it in Mandarin.
We begin with a sketch of the English system. We generalize to a
default principleof interpretation that applies to languages with
and without tense, and then give principlesand make predictions
about temporal location in Mandarin. In the second part of
thischapter we report a study of six Mandarin texts, in which we
tested our predictions. Thepredictions were borne out, as
demonstrated with examples and discussion.
1. Temporal interpretation in EnglishTime is a single unbounded
dimension. Like space, it requires an orientation point
or anchor for location. The anchor may be a time or situation
(the term 'situation' includesevents and states). Tense morphemes
and time adverbials are traditionally deictic, that is,interpreted
relative to Speech Time. But when one looks at actual texts, the
situation ismore complex: tense is interpreted in different ways in
different contexts (Smith 2000b).
-
Three patterns of tense interpretation are found in English,
according to thediscourse context in which a clause appears.
Discourse modes, introduced in Smith(2000a), distinguish different
types of context, they are realized in the passages of texts.The
discourse modes are recognizable passages of text, intuitively of
different types, thathave particular force and linguistic features.
Five modes are posited: Narrative, Report,Description, Informative,
and Argument-Commentary. The list is not exhaustive - itignores
conversation and procedural discourse - but it includes modes that
are frequentlyfound. The modes cut across genres. Two interpreted
linguistic features characterizediscourse modes; both relate to
temporality. One feature is the type of entity introducedinto the
universe of discourse; the second is the principle of
advancement.2
The patterns of tense interpretation are Continuity, Anaphora,
and Deixis. TheContinuity pattern appears in narrative passages and
procedural discourse. The Anaphorapattern appears in description.
The Deictic pattern is the default, appearing in the otherdiscourse
modes.
In narrative, situations are related to each other. The fragment
(1), taken from anovel, illustrates. (Sources of examples are given
at the end of the chapter.)
(1) The Continuity pattern of tense interpretation...She put on
her apron, took a lump of clay from the bin and weighed off
enoughfor a small vase. The clay was wet. Frowning, she cut the
lump in half with acheese-wire to check for air bubbles, then
slammed the pieces together muchharder than usual. A fleck of clay
spun off and hit her forehead, just above herright eye.
The same tense occurs throughout, typical of narrative. Relative
past tenses such as thepast perfect and the future-in-past may also
occur.3
The next example illustrates the Anaphoric pattern, which
relates situations to aprevious time. (2) is a descriptive passage
from a novel. We assume that passages in thispattern have a
durative adverbial, overt or tacit, with the entire passage in its
scope.
(2) The Anaphoric pattern of tense interpretation...In the
passenger car every window was propped open with a stick of
kindlingwood. A breeze blew through, hot and then cool, fragrant of
the woods andyellow flowers and of the train. The yellow
butterflies flew in at any window,
-
out at any other, and outdoors one of them could keep up with
the train, whichthen seemed to be racing with a butterfly.
In description, the Anaphoric pattern of tense interpretation
holds for all situations. Thereare some coercion effects, shifts
from basic situation types. They follow a well-knownpattern that is
due to the tacit adverbial of duration (Moens 1987, Smith 1995,
Smith2000a).4 The same tense occurs throughout, as is typical in
description.
The default pattern of tense interpretation is Deictic: the
situations mentioned arerelated to Speech Time. The pattern occurs
in the Report, Argument-Commentary, andInformative modes; and
probably in conversation and other modes as well. Example (3)is
taken from a newspaper report:
(3) The Deictic pattern of tense interpretationA week that began
in violence ended violently here, with bloody clashes in theWest
Bank and Gaza and intensified fighting in Southern
Lebanon...Despite theviolence, back-channel talks continued in
Sweden. Israeli, Palestinian andAmerican officials have
characterized them as a serious and constructive dialogueon the
process itself and on the final status issues. News accounts here
say thatIsrael is offering as much as 90 percent of the West Bank
to Palestinians, althoughit is difficult to assess what is really
happening by the bargaining moves that areleaked.
It is common for Deictic passages to have different tenses, as
in this example.We have demonstrated three patterns of tense
interpretation. The first two appear
in passages of Narrative and Descriptive discourse modes; both
are special contexts. Weassume that they are recognizable to the
reader - although recognition need not beconscious - and that the
reader adjusts to them automatically. We also assume that
thediscourse modes and patterns of temporal interpretation hold
across languages, mutatismutandis.
1.2 The deictic patternWe now consider in more detail the
Deictic pattern of tense interpretation in
English, which we take to be typical of a tensed language. One
reason for our confidenceis the traditional view, not limited to
any particular language, that tense is deictic. Weignore relative
tenses, which anchor to a time explicit in the context.
-
Essential to the deictic pattern are the aspectual notions of
event and state, and ofbounded and ongoing situations; we discuss
them in greater detail below. In deixis bothevents and states are
related to Speech Time (SpT). The default is that bounded events
arelocated in the Past, while ongoing events and states are located
in the Present; other casesrequire additional information:
(4) The Deictic pattern of temporal form and interpretationa.
Ongoing events are in the Present (present tense): located at
SpT
i Mary is singing.b. States are in the Present (present tense):
located at SpT
i Sue knows the answer.ii Tom (often) feeds the cat.
c. Bounded events are in the Past (past tense): located before
SpTi Mary sang.ii Tom fed the cat.
d. Additional explicit temporal information may override a-cThe
summary in (4a-c) expresses the most frequent choices found in
passages with thedeictic pattern; (4d) provides for the less
frequent choices. The Present is conveyed bypresent tense, location
in the Past is conveyed by past tense.5
Other possibilities also appear, though less frequently. States
may be located in the Pastor Future, ongoing events located in the
Past or Future, and bounded events in the Future.These temporal
locations are conveyed by tense, auxiliary will, adverbials and
lexicalinformation (such as the future orientation of certain
verbs, e.g. suggest, predict).
However, bounded events may not be located at Speech Time. This
is not anomission but an important gap in the paradigm. A
constraint exists on bounded eventsthat prevents them from being
located in the Present. Events in the Present must bepresented as
ongoing, e.g. John is talking, Mary is drawing a circle; otherwise
event verbconstellations are taken as Statives conveying a general
pattern, like Tom (often) feeds thecat. There are exceptions,
notably performatives (I christen this ship the 'QueenElizabeth')
and sports-announcer reports (Now Jones throws the ball to third
base).
This constraint, which we call the Bounded Event Constraint, is
pragmatic innature. It comes from a principle of communication that
holds in language generally:Speakers follow the convention that
communication is instantaneous. The perspective of
-
the Present is thus incompatible with bounded events, because
the bounds would gobeyond that perspective (Kamp and Reyle
1993).
Information about events and states, and boundedness, is
aspectual. Aspectualsystems have two components, 'viewpoint' and
'situation type' (Smith 1997). Situationtype indirectly classifies
a sentence as expressing a state or an event. Aspectual
viewpointpresents a situation, or eventuality (Bach 1981), as
bounded or unbounded.
Event and state categories are idealizations of types of
situations. Events, with thefeature [+Dynamic], occur at successive
stages and have endpoints. States areundifferentiated and
homogenous, holding consistently throughout an interval (the
sub-interval property). Simple states hold at a specific time (Lee
knew the answer, Kim issick). Generalizing states (Terry plays
tennis) hold as a pattern over time (Krifka et al1995). Other
temporal features are not relevant here (see Smith 1997).
Situation types are realized at clause level by the verb and its
arguments, the 'verbconstellation'. Clauses of each type have
unique distributional and interpretive properties.Thus, the
situation types are covert linguistic categories in the sense of
Whorf (1956). Alllanguages, so far as we know, have situation type
categories.
Aspectual viewpoints make available for semantic interpretation
all or part of asituation. They are conveyed morphologically, and
are obligatory in English:
(5) a. Lee sang. Perfective Eventb. Lee was singing. Progressive
Eventc. Lee knew the answer. State
The perfective is conveyed by the simple verb form, (5a,c); the
imperfective by theprogressive verbal auxiliary be+ing, (5b). The
progressive appears neutrally only withevent verb constellations.6
Progressives and other imperfectives share an importantproperty
with states: they present a situation without endpoints, and thus
have the sub-interval property. The perfective occurs with clauses
of all situation types; it presentsbounded events, and states.
In the Present, all sentences with the simple verb form are
taken as states. Theymay be simple (6a), or Generalizing /habitual
states (6b-c):
(6) a. Lee knows the answer.b. Lee sings.
c. Sam (often) feeds the cats.
-
The Generalizing interpretation of simple Present event
sentences follows from theBounded Event Constraint introduced
above.2. The deictic pattern generalized
The Deictic pattern relates events and states to Speech Time.
The pattern can bestated as a generalization about how situations
are located in time without reference totense; ongoing events and
states form the natural class of Unbounded situations.7
(7) Generalized deictic pattern of temporal interpretation. a.
Unboundedeventualities are located at Speech Time. b. Bounded
events are located beforeSpeech Time. c. Explicit temporal
information overrides a and b.
This pattern is not invariant. Bounded events may be located in
the Future, and states orongoing events in the Past or Future.
Crucially, explicit temporal information conveysdepartures from the
pattern. The simplicity of (7) is partly due to the Bounded
EventConstraint, which blocks bounded events from location in the
Present
We predict that tenseless languages follow the Deictic pattern
of temporalinterpretation unless there is contextual indication of
another pattern. Specifically: clausesexpressing states and ongoing
events are interpreted as Present; clauses expressingbounded events
are interpreted as Past; and clauses expressing other possibilities
will haveadditional temporal and aspectual information. We do not
claim that this pattern holdsfor all texts. We expect differences
in passages of narrative and descriptive discoursemodes.
3. MandarinIn this section we discuss temporal location in
Mandarin. We begin by summarizing
the linguistic resources that convey temporal information in the
language. We then statethe predictions of the deictic approach for
Mandarin, and show how they explain thetemporal interpretation of
six written Mandarin texts.
3.1 The temporal resources of Mandarin
The Mandarin aspectual system consists of the categories of
situation type and
viewpoint. Temporal location is conveyed by temporal adverbials,
indirectly by modal
verbs, which we take to be future-oriented; and the lexical
properties of certain verbs.
Mandarin does not have tense.
-
Aspectual viewpoints are conveyed by the morphemes -le, -guo,
zai, and -zhe.
The -le and -guo are perfective; perfectivity is also conveyed
by Resultative Verb
Complements such as -wan. 8 The zai is a progressive
imperfective, appearing neutrally
only with event clauses; -zhe is a general imperfective (Smith
1994). Viewpointmorphemes are often optional.9
Situation type is conveyed by verb constellation in Mandarin, as
in other
languages (Smith 1994, 1997). The situation type categories
include events and states. Generalizing/habitual clauses belong to
the category of states. Such clauses have the
verb constellations of events, but express a pattern of events
rather than a particular event.
They are semantically stative. Generalizing/habitual clauses can
be recognized by these
linguistic tests (Krifka et al 1995):
1) habitual adverbials like zong 'always', changchang 'often',
mei tian 'every day'
occur or can be inserted without changing the sense of the
clause. 2) they can be rephrased
with 'whenever X, Y...', 'every time'.
The modals hui, yao, neng and keyi tend to convey future time,
as in:
(8) .neng zai meili qingjie de huanjing xia chengzhang....be
able to grow up in a beautiful, clean environment.
We are aware that there is a great deal more to be said about
the contribution of modals,
but for the purposes of this chapter we believe that this
informal characterization suffices.
Future-oriented verbs indicate Future time, e.g. jihua 'plan',
tiyi 'propose',
jueding 'decide':
(9) bing jueding jiaogei zhongguokexueyuan wubaiwanyuan,'... and
also decided to transfer 5,000,000 RMB to the Chinese Academy
of
Sciences,'
We assume that modals appear in clauses quite generally;
restrictions on their occurrenceare beyond the scope of this
discussion.
-
Mandarin has several types of temporal adverbials. Locating
adverbials includexianzai 'now' and mingtian 'tomorrow':
(10 zai zuori de fangong'an fa dayouxing....'At yesterday's
large demonstration against the Public Order Ordinance....'
Adverbial connectives include yihou 'after, then',jiu 'then, at
once', cai 'only then':(11) ...you LE yitao xiangfa zhihou cai neng
zhuoshou yanjiu.
'...only after having a set of ideas can one begin
research.'
These and related temporal expressions convey temporal
information in Mandarin.We can now state the predictions of the
generalized pattern of deictic
interpretation (given in (7) above) for Mandarin forms at clause
level:(12) a. Unbounded situations are located at Speech Time:
expressed by:
Clauses with aspectual zai or -zhe;Clauses with state verb
constellations;Generalizing/habitual clauses.
b. Bounded events are located before Speech Time: expressed
by:Clauses with aspectual le or -guo and/or RVCClauses with event
verb constellations.
c. Other temporal information overrides a and b: expressed
by:Modals, adverbials, and temporally-oriented verbs in all
clausetypes
We follow the interpretive convention that event clauses are
taken as bounded if theyhave either a perfective morpheme, or no
viewpoint morpheme. The Bounded EventConstraint excludes locating
specific, bounded events in the Present.
3.2 The empirical studyWe analyzed six discursive articles from
current Hong Kong newspapers and
magazines. All are from serious publications, in standard
written Chinese style. Weavoided articles in the colloquial written
Cantonese style, popular in Hong Kongadvertising, gossip columns,
and tabloid papers. Three are editorials from the Ming Pao, a staid
newspaper which serves as stylistic model for literature
students.
The editorials average about 700 characters. The Ming Pao also
publishes anEnglish translation on the following day. Three longer
articles come from the Ming Pao
-
Monthly, Asiawee, and Frontline Monthly. These contain about
2,000 characters each.(See Sources for complete list.) The six
articles have a total of 7,640 characters, 176sentences, in 699
clauses. The sentences are long, averaging 43 characters or 4
clauseseach. (See Table 1.) English translations typically divide
into two or three times moresentences.
Procedure: Each clause was coded for: situation type (event,
state, generalizing-habitual), explicit aspectual viewpoint or RVC,
temporal adverbial or other temporalform, modal, special lexical
verb factors, whether within the scope of a precedingtemporal
adverbial.
Results: The predictions were borne out: Events tended to be
located in the Past,Simple states and Generalizing/habitual states
tended to be located in the Present.Adverbial information appeared
in clauses that conveyed past states, and future states andevents.
There were no ongoing events. This last result should be seen in
the context ofanother fact: the number of aspect morphemes was
vanishingly small.
4. Temporal information in the Mandarin textsWe discuss our
results according to the predictions of the generalized deictic
pattern of interpretation. The first prediction is that
unbounded situations will betemporally located in the present,
unless the context conveys information to the contrary.Recall that
unbounded situations are expressed by clauses with stative
verbconstellations, generalizing statives and imperfective
aspectual markers. There were fewof the latter in these texts.
Our first example focuses on stative verb constellations. The
temporalinterpretation is derived from the situation types for each
clause. Clauses are markedwith superscripts as Event (E) or State
(S) at what we take to be the boundaries of eachclause; we do not
wish to commit ourselves about the syntax. The interpretation is
ourown, checked with native speakers. A literal translation
provides a rough guide. Thesentences in (13) come from an editorial
about economic planning after the Seattle riotsagainst the World
Trade Organization. The first two clauses express events. In
context,these are located in the past according to our predictions.
The next few clauses arestative.
-
(13) a.[weici fazhanzhong guojia xiang fadaguojia tichu you
to-this-end develop-amidst nation toward develop-nation propose
have
zhixu kaifang shichang, jiangdi guanshui,] E1orderly open
market, lower tariff,
[yi qiu yiding shiqinei baozhang benguo deand request fixed
time-period-within guarantee own-country DE
shichang yu gongye,]E2market and industry,
shi wanquan heli de zuofa.] S1is entirely reasonable DE
action.
b. [buguo, xianggang meiyou biguan zishou de tiaojian.]
S2however, Hong Kong not-have close self-self DE situation.
c. [ xianggang shi shijieshang ziyoudu zuigao de
jingjitixi.]S3Hong Kong is world-on freedom-degree most-high DE
economic system.
d [miandui fadaguojia gaokeji chanpin,confront developed-nation
high-technology product
yiji linjindiqu dichengben laodongalong-with neighboring-region
low-cost [capital] labor
mijixing chanpin de liang mian jiaji,] S4intense-type product DE
two-side pincer-attack,
[xianggang de chulu zhiyou yi tiao,]S5Hong Kong DE out-road
only-have one-route CL ,
-
[jiushi nuli xiang fadaguojia kanqi,] E3that-is effort toward
developed-nation emulate,
[jiasu fazhan gaokeji yu zhishixing jingji.] E4speed-up develop
high-technology and knowledge-shaped economy.
'To this end, it is totally reasonable for developing countries
to have proposedto developed nations that they should open their
markets in an orderlymanner and lower their tariffs gradually so
that their markets and industriescan be safe for some time.
However, Hong Kong does not have the option ofclosing its doors.
Hong Kong is the freest economy in the world. Under apincer attack
of high tech products from developed countries and
low-cost,labor-intensive products from its neighbors, Hong Kong has
only one option:to emulate developed countries and try to speed up
its high tech developmentand transition to a knowledge-based
economy.'
The clauses marked with a superscript S are located in the
present, as we predict. Thelast two clauses express unrealized
events set in the future. The linguistic cue is nulixiang 'make an
effort toward', a future-oriented expression.
Generalizing statives are illustrated in the next example. These
express a generalpattern rather than a specific event or state.
They are semantically stative, and predictedto be located in the
present, unless there is information to the contrary. Example
(14)comes from an article in Asia Week about Hong Kong men who keep
concubines inShenzhen. Most clauses in the article are generalizing
statives:
(14) ..[youxie ernai] S1have-some "concubine"
[geng hui zhuanhuan shenfen], S2even will change identity,
[dang buyong peiban zhangfu shi],S3 when need-not accompany
"husband" time,
[hui chuan de hen liangkuai] S4may dress DE very "cool"
-
[waichu dang "qijie"] S5 outside-go become "street walkers"
[jietou lake de jinu,]S6street-corner solicit-patron DE
prostitute,
[huo zai kalaoukei zhuan waikuai.]S7
or at karaoke earn quick-cash.
'There are some "concubines" who will even change identities,
when they don'tneed to accompany their "husbands" they wear very
"skimpy" clothes, go outand become "streetwalkers," prostitutes who
solicit on the street corners, or earnsome quick cash at karaoke
bars.'
The clauses all express generalizations about the women's
habits. The linguisticcues are: (a) a class rather than individual
is introduced (xie ernai 'certain concubines');(b) a pattern of
events is expressed (dang...huo... 'when... or ...').
Another example appears in (15), which begins an article asking
why Hong Konguniversities are not producing great scholars. All the
clauses express generalizingstatives.
(15) a [xianggang de jiaoyu yijing guodu zhiduhua,] S1Hong Kong
DE education already exceed-limit systematized,
[yiqie dou zai zhaoban de moshi.] S2everything all ZAI
indiscriminately-imitate "rationalization" DE model.
b. [dan wenzhang fabiao de yu duo,] S3but article publish DE
the-more many,
[bingbu biaoshi xueshujiazhi benshen de tigao,] S4by-no-means
indicate academic-value itself DE increase,
-
[faner shi xuezhe biancheng lianghua de jiqi.] S5instead make
scholar become "quantization" DE machine.
'Education in Hong Kong is already overly systematized,
everything isalways indiscriminately imitating some model of
"rationalization." Butpublishing more essays certainly does not
indicate an increase in scholarlymerit, on the contrary, it turns
the scholar into a "quantization" machine.'
The first two clauses concern Hong Kong education; the next
three are generalizationsabout scholars. Although they involve
actions, the clauses are semantically stativebecause they involve a
pattern of events rather than a particular event. No
temporallocation information is given. The interpretation is
present, in accord with ourpredictions.
The deictic pattern does not require that states be located in
the present, of course.Overt information can locate a state in the
past or future. The fragment in (16) illustratesstates located in
the recent past; the clauses come under the scope of the time
adverbialjinnian 'in recent years'.
(16) [jinnian, [shenzhen jingji jisu fazhan],E1recent-years,
Shenzhen economy rapidly develop,
[xianggang he shenzhen liangdi jiaotong fangbian], S1 Hong Kong
and Shenzhen two-place transportation convenient,
[renliu riyi pinfan], S2 people-stream increasingly
frequent,
[jiashang xiaofei yu shenghuo zhishu shuiping chaju....] S3
add-on consumption and living index level difference....
'In recent years, as the Shenzhen economy developed rapidly,
transportationbetween Hong Kong and Shengzhen was convenient, the
flow of people
-
increased, add to that the differences in standards of spending
and quality oflife....'
Fragment (17) has a state located in the future. The stative
clause is within the scope ofying 'should', which is
forward-looking:
(17) [ciwai zhengfu geng ying kaolu touzi....] S1in-addition
government more should consider investing in....'In addition, the
government should even more consider investing in....'
In cases like this, which we take to be the default, the modal
indicates the future. In some
contexts ying 'should' and other modals may have a different
force.We now turn to events. The deictic pattern predicts that
events are temporally
located in the past. Events are recognizable by verb
constellation; they may appear withno overt temporal information,
with perfective aspect markers or RVCs, or with temporaladverbials.
In the texts we examined there were many temporal adverbials, very
fewaspect markers. We did not find any unmarked event verb
constellations with pastinterpretation in our sample.
The examples below illustrate. In fragment (18) an event verb
constellation hasan RVC, for a conclusion reached after scholarly
discussion. In (19) the events areexpressed with le, in a) to
describe funding for high tech research, and in b) forgovernment
violations of public trust. In (20) an event, announcement of a
managementshake-up, is interpreted as past because it comes within
the scope of a past timeadverbial.
(18) [zhe shi wo he duowei nianqing xuezhe jiaotan hou] S1this
be I and many-CL young scholar exchange-talk after
[suo dedao de jielun.] E1SUO reach-RVC DE conclusion.'Many young
scholars and I reached this conclusion after discussion'.(19) a
[...zhexie yanjiu dou bei pizhun le.]E
-
...this-several research all BEI approve LE.
'...these research projects were all approved'.
b. [ ...ye dou sipo cuihui le.]E
... also all rip-apart destroy LE.
'... were all also ripped apart and destroyed'.
(20) [budao lianggeyue de shijian li, not-reach two-month DE
time in,
zhongguo kejijie de xinzangdiqu --China technology-world DE
heart-place --
zhongguancun de sanjia daibiaoxing qiyeZhongguan-Cun DE
three-company representative-character business --
si tong, fangzheng he lianxiang xianhouSitong, Fangzheng and
Liangxiang all
fasheng zhongda renshi biandong.arise enormous personnel
changes.]E
'Yet before two months had passed, the very heart of China's
technology world
-- the three most representative companies in Zhongguan Cun --
Sitong,
Fangzheng and Lianxiang -- had all undergone enormous changes
in
personnel.'
Temporal adverbials can also locate an event in the future, as
in (21), aboutmainland controls on pollution:
(21) [neidi jiangyu benzhouliu quanmian jinyongmainland about-to
on-this-Saturday completely ban-usejiyongjiqi de fabao
canju....]E
-
disposable DE styrofoam food-containers....
'This coming Saturday the mainland will completely ban use of
disposablestyrofoam food containers....'
5. Summary and discussionThe main patterns in the texts are
these:(a) Events are located in the past. Temporal adverbials,
often with scope over
many clauses, locate events and states in the Past.(b) Simple
and Generalizing States are located in the Present.(c) Modals and
future-oriented verbs locate situations in the Future.
The patterns conform to our predictions.Somewhat unexpectedly,
past adverbials appeared with most event clauses
temporally located in the Past. This may be due to the type of
articles we studied. Therewere few aspect markers: only 49 of 7,640
characters (Table 2). One editorial containedonly one le, and no
other markers. Together the six articles contained just one
progressivezai, four stative imperfective zhe, five past -guo, and
39 perfective -le. This is anaverage of one aspect marker every
three sentences. Measured more reliably, as aspectmarkers per
clause, that averages one aspect marker every 14 clauses, or 7% of
clauses.
Although precise comparisons are not available, the texts had
fewer aspectualmarkers than are found in narratives, or probably in
ordinary conversation. Christensen,for example, found aspect
markers in 36% of the 'idea units', which generally correspondto
clauses, in written Chinese narrations of Chafe's 'Pear Stories'
experimental film(1994). The most representative spoken Mandarin
narrative in Erbaugh's 'Pear Stories'finds 26% aspect markers
(1992). Purely descriptive texts such as museum catalogdescriptions
may contain no aspect markers at all.
The amount of aspect marking in the written Mandarin articles is
variable andskewed, ranging from 1% - 23% of clauses with aspect
markers (Table 3). Perfective -leis overwhelmingly the most
frequent, 78% of all aspect morphemes.10 Some 40% of allaspect
markers appeared in one article, in blow-by-blow narrative passages
aboutmanagement shake-ups. A rhetorical comparison of Chinese and
English newspapers in
-
Beijing and Hong Kong also finds extensive variation (Scollon,
Scollon, and Kirkpatrick1994).
The rare overt aspect markers add emphasis. For example, our
sole progressive( zai) seems clearly emphatic in the discussion of
scholarly life. (Fuller context in (15)above.)
(22) [yiqie dou zai zhaoban de moshi.] S1everything all ZAI
indiscriminately-imitate "rationalization" DE model.'Education in
Hong Kong is already overly systematized, everything is
alwaysindiscriminately imitating some model of
"rationalization."
Viewpoint aspect markers are usually optional in written texts,
with high variabilityamong speakers (Spanos 1979, Chu 1983). The
other aspect markers are much rarer, asshown in Tables 2 and 3.
6. Conclusion.The most important finding is that aspectual
situation types event and state are
the key to understanding temporal location in Mandarin. These
covert categories interactwith aspectual viewpoint, adverbial, and
lexical information to convey temporalinformation. Mandarin
discursive prose follows the generalized Deictic pattern oftemporal
location, complemented by the Constraint on Bounded Events.
In the study of written texts, temporal location was frequently
marked byadverbials. Overt aspectual morphemes were few, with
perfective le by far the mostfrequent. This result suggests that
viewpoint marking is relatively infrequent in thediscursive genres
we studied. The high degree of variability and optionality
illuminatesthe stylistic subtleties of Mandarin rhetoric.
We have shown that there is a strong commonalty in tensed and
tenselesslanguages, due to the aspectual component. In the
discussion we have taken English asrepresentative of a tensed
language, and Mandarin Chinese of a tenseless language.
Aninteresting question for future research is whether our findings
extend to other tenselesslanguages such as Vietnamese, Thai, and
Cantonese.
-
ReferencesBach, Emmon. (1981) On time, tense, and aspect: An
essay in English metaphysics. In
Peter Cole (ed.) Radical pragmatics. NY: Academic
Press.Christensen, Matthew Bruce. (1994) Variation in spoken and
written Mandarin narrative
discourse (Chinese). Columbus, OH: Ohio State University
dissertation.Chu, Chauncey. (1983) A reference grammar of Mandarin.
New York: Peter Lang.Chu, Chauncey, and Vincent Chang. (1983) The
discourse function of the verbal suffix -le
in Mandarin. Journal Chinese Language Teachers Association 15:
309-333.Comrie, Bernard. (1986) Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.Erbaugh, Mary S. (1990) Mandarin oral narratives
compared with English: The
Pear/Guava stories. Chinese Language Teachers Association
Journal 25.2:21-42.
Erbaugh, Mary S. (1992) The acquisition of Mandarin. In Dan I.
Slobin (ed.) The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition
Vol. 3. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates.
Herweg, Michael. (1991) Perfective and imperfective aspect and
the theory of events andstates. Linguistics 29: 969-1010.
Kamp, Hans, and Uwe Reyle. (1993) From discourse to logic.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.Krifka, Manfred, Francis J. Pelletier, Greg
Carlson, Alice ter Meulen, Gennaro Chierchia,
and Godehard Link. (1995) Genericity: An introduction. In Greg
Carlson andFrancis J. Pelletier (eds) The generic book. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Moens, Mark. (1987) Tense, aspect, and temporal reference.
Edinburgh: University ofEdinburgh dissertation.
Scollon, Ron, Suzanne Scollon, and Andy Kirkpatrick. (1998)
Contrastive discourse inChinese and English -- A critical appraisal
Beijing: Foreign Language Teachingand Research Press
Smith, Carlota S. (1994) Aspectual viewpoint and situation type
in Mandarin Chinese.Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3:
107-46.
Smith, Carlota S. (1995) The range of aspectual situation types:
Shifts and a boundingparadox. In P. Bertinetto (et. al.) Temporal
reference: Aspect and actionality Vol. 2.Turin: Rosenberg and
Sellier.
Smith, Carlota S. (1997) The parameter of aspect. (2nd edition).
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
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Smith, Carlota S. (1999) Activities: states or events?
Linguistics and Philosophy 22: 479-508.
Smith, Carlota S. (2000a) Discourse mode: A linguistically
interesting level of textstructure. In Proceedings of the Workshop
on Spoken and Written texts, TheUniversity of Texas at Austin,
October 2000.
Smith, Carlota S. (2000b) The domain of tense. In Proceedings of
the InternationalRound Table The Syntax of Tense and Aspect, Paris,
November 2000.
Spanos, George. (1979) Contemporary Chinese use of le: A survey
and a pragmaticproposal. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers
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Whorf, Benjamin L. (1956) Language, thought, and reality.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Endnotes1 This research was supported by the Research Grants
Council of Hong Kong, China
(CERG 9040294). We especially thank Ms. Wu Qing for help in
preparing the texts.We also thank the organizers of the conference
for the opportunity to present thiswork, as well as the audience
for helpful questions and comments.
2 The discourse modes and interpreted linguistic features are
discussed extensively in
Smith 2000a. Patterns of tense interpretation are given in Smith
2000b, both articlesare available through Smith's web page.
3 The past perfect (Yesterday, John had (already) left) and the
future-in-past (the tense
of the complement clause in John told me yesterday that he would
leave) are relativetenses, understood as anchored to an explicit
time - yesterday.
4 Shifted situation types such as inchoatives (Suddenly Mary
knew the truth) occur
when an element in the context is incompatible with the
basic-level situation type,triggering a shift. The process of shift
is known as 'coercion', from Moens 1987.Smith 1995, 1997 uses the
terms 'shifted' or 'derived-level' for the results of
coercionprocesses.
5 In complex sentences, and in certain contexts, past tense and
present tense may nothave their usual temporal values.
-
6 Progressive statives are informal and somewhat marked, though
not uncommon, inspeech. For example, I'm loving this walk, The
river is smelling particularly badtoday. Sentences like this
present states as though they were events. These areinstances of
shifted situation types, due to coercion.
7 Ongoing events and states are unbounded; this property is
essential for all three
patterns of tense interpretation. Scholars such as Herweg (1991)
claim that the twocomprise a single semantic category of
imperfective. For arguments against this, seeSmith 1999.
8 Resultative Verb Complements (RVCs) function in both the
viewpoint and situation
type components of Mandarin. wan and others convey the
perfective viewpoint,RVCs may appear with or without aspectual
viewpoint morphemes (Smith 1994,1997).
9 The optionality of aspectual morphemes is quite well-known
(Spanos 1979, Chu
1983), but underestimated we think.. See section 5 for
discussion.10 For comparison, note that le tends to be most
frequent in other types of discourse:66% of aspect morphemes in
Christensen's written Pear Story, 82% in Erbaugh'sspoken Pear
Story, and a stunning 92% among preschool Mandarin-speaking
children(Erbaugh 1992:426). This validates Smith's claim that
Mandarin overt aspectmarking highlights the perfective. The le
perfectives correlated with verbs fordynamic events with RVCs, as
in example (19).
11 The aspectual value of sentences with -guo is unclear. Given
their similarity toperfects, at least some may function as
resultant statives. We cannot pursue thisquestion here.
Sources for English examples(1) Peter Robinson, A Necessary
End.(2) Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding.(3) The New York Times, May 5,
2000.
Sources for the Mandarin textsAnonymous. (1999a). (Government
should learn lesson from Seattle [editorial]). Ming
-
Pao Daily News.) December 12.Anonymous. (1999b) Hong Kong must
revise its policy on environmental protection[editorial] Ming Pao
Daily News). December 28.Anonymous. (2000) (The Hong Kong
government must renegotiate its regulations forpublic order
[editorial]). Ming Pao Daily News). October 9.(2000) Chen Lirong.
Stormy personnel conflicts rock Beijing's Silicon Valley).
FrontlineMonthly). February. 48-49.(2000) Li Oufan [Leo Lee]. 'Why
can't Hong Kong produce great scholars again?)(Ming Pao Monthly).
August. 21-22.2000) (Wang Ruizhi. Love and sex temptations of
Shenzhen's 'Village of Concubines'). AsiaWeek). 28 August-3
September. 24-25.
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Table 1 Article Length
Articles Editorials
Total Shenzhen Hi Tech Scholars Order Seattle Environment
Characters 7,640 1,910 2,171 1,420 501 900 738
Sentences 176 50 45 29 13 24 15
Clauses 699 197 123 198 60 91 30
Mean clauses
per sentence 4 4 3 6 4 4 2
Table 2 Aspect Morphemes
Articles Editorials
Total Shenzhen Hi Tech Scholars Order Seattle Environment
le 39 2 18 6 5 1 7
-guo 5 1 1 - 2 - 1
-zhe 4 3 1 - - - -
zai 1 - - 1 - - -
-
Table 3 Clauses with Aspect Morphemes
Articles Editorials
Mean Shenzhen Hi Tech Scholars Order Seattle Environment
Clauses
with le 6% 1% 15% 3% 8% 1% 23%Clauses with
-guo 1% - 6% - - - -
Clauses with
-zhe 1% - 3% - - - -Clauses with
zai - - - - - - -